Thursday 19 January 2012

Harlequin Authors Part XV - Thomas H. Raddall (1)

Three time Governor General's Award winner Thomas H. Raddall (1903-1994) was a popular Canadian author from the 1940s to the 1960s. Today I imagine he is little remembered outside of Nova Scotia where he spent most of his life. Here there is a provincial park, a county archive, and an award for fiction named after him.

Harlequin Books published four of his novels with Raddall's second novel, Roger Sudden, first. Originally published by McClelland & Stewart in 1944, it is still in print. It was also published in the US and UK as well a five part serial in the pulp Adventure.

The Harlequin edition is 320 pages long but we are told on the copyright page that it is "abridged for your reading pleasure." I wonder what Raddall thought of that. The abridgement is not subtle with whole paragraphs dropped at random. For example five of the first ten paragraphs are excised.

Harlequin 141 - December 1951 (reprinted July 1952)

Harlequin 141 back

Nimbus - 1996

Nimbus back

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